Ralph Waldo Emerson

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.

Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

For disappointments, that come not by our own folly, they are the trials or corrections of Heaven: and it is our own fault, if they prove not our advantage.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.

Intellectual work is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

All excess is ill, but drunkenness is of the worst sort. It spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans men. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous and bad.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

No matter how often you are defeated, you are born to victory.

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.

Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one’s world.

Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books – even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.